‘Trump’s anti-Muslim animus has always been on full display for anyone who wants to pay attention.’
Photograph: Eugene Garcia/EPA

The US supreme court has decided that the Trump administration’s Muslim ban can proceed in full, even as legal challenges to the ban continue. What a terrible and portentous decision not only for citizens from the banned countries but also for the very health and future our own nation.

With their short and unsigned orders, the supreme court appears now to be favoring the government’s argument, suggesting the court will rule with Trump when the legal challenges to the ban are finally heard. This may be unsurprising when considering the traditional deference the court has afforded the executive branch in matters of immigration, but it is no less infuriating.

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After all, the constitution forbids discriminating on the basis of religion, and the Immigration and Nationality Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of nationality and place of birth. It would be a travesty of justice to enshrine this kind of official bigotry against Muslims due to the separation of powers doctrine.

But the supreme court has made many wrongheaded decisions in the past. In Dred Scott v Sanford (1857), the court ruled that African Americans could not become citizens, further enshrining slavery into the American system.

The case of Plessy v Ferguson (1896) upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation. In Buck v Bell (1927), the court sided with eugenics (yes, eugenics!) by legally upholding the forced sterilization of people with intellectual disabilities. Fred Korematsu challenged the constitutionality of Japanese internment in Korematsu v United States (1944) and lost. Will we soon be adding the Muslim ban cases to this shameful list?

Trump’s third version of the Muslim ban was issued as a proclamation in September, and it superseded his two previous attempts. Each version has been longer and more strategic than its predecessor, showing how White House lawyers have been on a steep learning curve to make sure the ban will meet with the court’s approval.

None of that lawyering makes the ban any more necessary, however. How many terrorist attacks have Chadians committed on US soil? The answer is zero. Why is a Syrian grandmother a threat to Americans? The entry of any Syrian, regardless of age, is now suspended. Should a Somali wife not be able to reunite with her husband in the United States? Love conquers all but the Muslim ban, it seems.

‘A blanket ban will exclude some who, with their knowledge and talents, could be of great benefit to this country.’ Photograph: Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AFP/Getty Images

Munitions from the United States are currently being used against Yemeni civilians in that country’s punishing civil war. Is it not unconscionable that those same Yemeni civilians are now all but barred from seeking entry into the United States as immigrants?

In fact, the US already exercises strict discretion over who it allows into this country. Those decisions are made with due diligence at the individual level, as they should be, since there really is no security goal achieved by barring entry of more than 150 million people based solely on their national origin.

For one thing, such a blanket ban will necessarily end up excluding some who, with their knowledge and talents, could be of great benefit to this country. If anything, massive wholesale exclusion will only grow resentment against the United States globally.

But the Muslim ban very clearly serves an ideological agenda, one that couldn’t be clearer with Donald Trump’s retweets last week of noxious anti-Muslim videos posted by the extreme-right group Britain First. Trump’s anti-Muslim animus has always been on full display for anyone who wants to pay attention. What’s even more disturbing is watching this legal drama sanctioning our national prejudice play out in such slow motion.

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Many of us love to laugh at Trump because he looks and acts like a fool, but he’s a fool who has placed his man on the supreme court, is close to achieving a tax plan that will siphon huge amounts of wealth from the poor to the rich, has massively deregulated everything, has ended protections for migrants who came to America as children and limited refugee admissions to a trickle, and may soon have a supreme court decision in his favor regarding the Muslim ban. And the more he succeeds, the more even outlier Republicans will fall in line behind him.

In our zeal to mock Trump, we can’t let him and his cruel and narrow vision of the world have the last laugh. It’s time we get serious.

Moustafa Bayoumi is the author of the award-winning book How Does It Feel To Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America